Vegetables for Victory

I promise this will be my last post on this topic, but I ended up running over to the Library of Congress on Saturday morning after all and dug up a wealth of literature on Victory Gardens. Without a doubt, this was a well-organized movement with widely disseminated best practices and how-to guides... many of which are applicable today. Unfortunately, today we lack the support from the federal government that allowed the original gardens to organize so quickly. The USDA's goal from 1943 was to have 12 million town and city gardens that year, which they believed would yield six million tons of food. Therefore, in the spirit of propagating best practices, here are a few lessons-learned from early 1940s pamphlets and books:

Things to consider before you start your garden:
1. Find out what space is available.
2. If you're new to gardening, start with a smaller plot.
3. Consider what you actually want to eat. (And what you're going to do if you can't eat all of your carrots!)
4. Plan a succession of crops so you can eat year-round.
5. Grow things that will cost you less ration points. (Let's hope it doesn't get to this point...)

If several people in you neighborhood have gardens, hire someone to plow your plots on the same day - it should cost less money and save you from back-breaking work.

DO:

• Prepare your soil. Break it up, provide healthy dirt, and fertilize it.
• Cultivate and water your garden.
• Compost.
• Plan your garden first.

DON'T:

• Be scared.
• Work harder than you have to.
• Skip succession crops. "Be Scotch - get 2 or 3 crops out of every row!" (Wow.)
• Don't cheat. Put in the work and you'll get more from your garden.
• Don't think you know more than the man who grew your seeds. Follow the instructions on the packet.

If you haven't been bothered with weeds, you probably won't have much luck with a garden without lots of preparation.

A 20x40 foot garden (medium-sized in 1943, but probably quite large in 2009) feeds four from May to November, takes 6-8 hours to prepare (spread over time) and 2-3 hours per week once planted. However, an 8x10 garden in Brooklyn produced 70 beets, 11 lbs. snap beans, 16 lbs. swiss chard, 24 heads of lettuce, 8 lbs. spinach, 150 radishes, 75 carrots, 55 onions, and 26 tomatoes.

Remember: "You may not be able to carry a gun or drive a tank, but you can grow food for Victory!!"

Oh, and just for fun... a Popeye cartoon from 1943 on spinach VGs: